LATEST on cancellations and postponements.
First the Masters, now the PGA Championship.
Two days after a federal recommendation to not hold events of 50 or more people for the next eight weeks, the PGA of America decided to postpone the second major of the year, which was set for May 14-17 at Harding Park in San Francisco.
The PGA Championship will be rescheduled. Augusta National announced Friday that the Masters, scheduled for April 9-12, also would be played at a later day.
“We’re all working hard to get a date that makes sense for the championship and hopefully for Harding Park,” Seth Waugh, CEO of the PGA of America, said in a telephone interview. “Our intent is to hold the championship as close to normal, whatever that is anymore.”
The new normal is no golf for the next two months because of fears over the new coronavirus.
Shortly after the PGA Championship announcement, the PGA Tour said it was canceling an additional four tournaments on its schedule — the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, N.C., and the AT&T Byron Nelson in Dallas.
The tour also said it was canceling three PGA Tour Champions and postponing one — the Regions Tradition, the first of five majors on the 50-and-old circuit, moves from May 7-10 to Sept. 24-27. The tour said none of its six tours, including China, Latin American and Canada, will be holding events through at least May 10.
The LPGA Tour, which previously canceled three events in Arizona and California, is not scheduled to play again until April 15 in Hawaii, followed by two more events in California.
The USGA said the U.S. Women’s Open (June 4-7 in Houston) and U.S. Open were going ahead as scheduled, but it canceled all the May qualifiers for those championships with hopes of designing a new system.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines on Sunday not to have events of 50 or more people for two months. The following day, San Francisco was among six Bay Area counties that issued orders for residents to go outdoors only when necessary for the next three weeks.
That seemed to doom the PGA Championship being played in May, because the end of the eight weeks is the Sunday before the championship.
Augusta National typically closes for the summer in mid-May and opens in October. The PGA Championship has more flexibility with Harding Park, a public course where golf is played all year. Waugh said the structures for the PGA Championship, such as grandstands and hospitality, were about 25% finished.
With two majors being rescheduled, another piece of the puzzle is the PGA Tour and its lucrative FedEx Cup that ends the season on Aug. 30.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan already has wiped off eight tournaments from his schedule, including The Players Championship, with the richest purse in golf at $15 million.
The tour does not have an open date on its schedule through the end of the season at the Tour Championship.
FRENCH OPEN PUSHED BACK
The French Open was postponed for about four months because of the coronavirus pandemic, shifting from May to September and juggling the tennis calendar.
The French tennis federation said Tuesday that it will hold its 15-day clay-court event at Roland Garros in Paris from Sept. 20 to Oct. 4, instead of May 24 to June 7, “to ensure the health and safety of everyone involved in organizing the tournament.”
In the press release announcing the decision, federation President Bernard Giudicelli described it as “a difficult yet brave decision in this unprecedented situation.” Later, in a conference call with reporters, Giudicelli acknowledged the other Grand Slam tournaments and the men’s and women’s professional tours were informed of the change — but not consulted.
“It’s unthinkable for us to remove Roland Garros from the calendar. The only thing we had in mind is the interests of the tournament, of the players,” Giudicelli said. “We looked at the fortnight that was least damaging for the other [tournaments].”
The French Open’s new dates place it right after the hard-court U.S. Open is currently scheduled to be held in New York, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 13. Having just one week between two major championships, played on different surfaces, would be unusually short.
The new timeline for the French Open also conflicts with several WTA and ATP hard-court tournaments already slated for those two weeks, as well as the Laver Cup exhibition event in Boston.
“This is madness,” tweeted Canadian pro Vasek Pospisil. “Major announcement by Roland Garros changing the dates to one week after the US Open. No communication with the players or the ATP.. we have ZERO say in this sport. It’s time. #UniteThePlayers”
This is the first instance of a Grand Slam tournament being affected by the virus that has spread around the world. The next major tennis championship on the calendar is Wimbledon, which is to start in late June in England.
After the French Open’s postponement was announced, Richard Lewis, the chief executive of the All England Club, which runs Wimbledon, said his group was continuing to plan for that tournament “at this time.”
He added: “It remains a continuously evolving situation and we will act responsibly, in the best interests of wider society.”
Several tournaments in March and April have been called off by the men’s and women’s tours as a result of the outbreak.
The end of this year’s French Open was supposed to represent the cutoff for ATP and WTA ranking points that would help determine which players were eligible to compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics starting in late July.